Department of Physics at the U of I

Winners of the McMillan Award

The William L. McMillan Award was established by his friends and colleagues to recognize outstanding contributions by a young condensed matter physicist. One of the most creative and distinguished members of our department from 1972 until his untimely death in 1984, Professor McMillan was noted for his basic and unique contributions to many areas of condensed matter physics, including liquid helium, superconductivity, liquid crystals, layer compounds, spin glasses, and localization phenomena. In many of these areas, he made novel applications of computer techniques to obtain increased physical understanding of complex many-body systems.

David Hsieh, 2012
California Institute of Technology
Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
"for studies of topological insulators and their surface states using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and measurements of the helical spin texture of these novel electronic states."

David Schuster, 2011
University of Chicago
James Franck Institute
"for pioneering contributions to the new field of "circuit quantum electrodynamics," particularly experiments coupling microwaves to spin ensembles and the superconducting qubits"

Liang Fu, 2010 (shared)
Harvard University
"for the prediction of three-dimensional topological insulators"

Rahul Roy, 2010 (shared)
Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics
"for the prediction of three-dimensional topological insulators"

Abhay Narayan Pasupathy, 2009
Columbia University
"for his contributions to single-molecule transport spectroscopy and for the development of precise variable temperature scanning tunneling microscopy to reveal the connection between local values of the gap and their onset temperatures in high temperature superconductors"

Andrei Bernevig, 2008
Princeton Center for Theoretical Science
"for his insightful contributions to the theory of the quantum spin Hall effect, and for the prediction of the realization of this new state of matter in HgTe quantum wells, subsequently confirmed by recent experiments"

Jason Petta, 2007
Princeton University
"for pioneering experiments involving quantum manipulation of spin and charge in solid state devices"

Yayu Wang, 2006
University of California, Berkeley
"for his ground-breaking Nernst effect and magnetization torque experiments, which have established the existence of large vortex fluctuations throughout much of the pseudogap regime of the high-temperature superconductor LaSrCuO well above its critical temperature"

Peter Armitage, 2005
Johns Hopkins University and
University of Geneva, Switzerland
"for his crucial contributions to the field of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy studies of electron-doped superconductors"

Markus Greiner, 2004
JILA, University of Colorado
"for observing a tunable quantum phase transition between a superfluid and a localized state of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice"

Alessandra Lanzara, 2003
University of California, Berkeley
"for her discovery of a universal energy scale in the nodal quasi-particle spectrum of the cuprate superconductors"

David Goldhaber-Gordon, 2002
Stanford University
"for the first experimental observation of the many-body physics associated with the Kondo resonance in a nanoscale device"

Jay Kikkawa, 2001
University of Pennsylvania
"for the development of new optical resonance schemes to explore the physics of interacting electronic spin systems and to manipulate spin information in the solid state"

Igor L. Aleiner, 2000
State University of New York
"for his broad-ranging and significant contributions to the theory of quantum transport in low-dimensional and mesoscopic systems"

Kathryn A. Moler, 1999
Stanford University
"for her fundamental studies of the superconducting pairing state, Josephson vortices, and the role of interlayer coupling in high temperature superconductors"

Amir Yacoby, 1998
The Weizmann Institute of Science
"for ground-breaking experiments in quantum transport in low-dimensional systems"

Daniel C. Ralph, 1997
Cornell University
"for fundamental contributions to the development and application of experimental techniques for studying nanoscale structures, most notably his measurements of the discrete spectra of electronic states in nanoscale aluminum particles"

Shivaji L. Sondhi, 1996
Princeton University
"for fundamental theoretical contributions to the understanding of the behavior of strongly interacting electrons, including quantum magnetism, quantum phase transitions, and the physics of the quantum Hall effect"

Sean E. Barrett, 1995
Yale University
"for the development of a novel optical pumping technique that made possible the direct detection of the nuclear spins in semiconductor quantum wells"

Raymond C. Ashoori, 1994
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"for high-precision capacitance measurements, one electron at a time, of small quantum dots"

Hong Wen Jiang, 1993
University of California at Los Angeles
"for ground-breaking experiments on the interactions between electrons and magnetic fields in various quantum Hall systems and electron localization phenomena"

R. Eric Betzig, 1992
AT&T Bell Laboratories
"for his significant contributions to the development of near-field optical microscopy, especially for dramatic improvements in resolution and performance"

Bart J. van Wees, 1991
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
"for pioneering theoretical and experimental work on many areas of quantum transport in mesoscopic systems"

Matthew P.A. Fisher, 1990
IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center
"for his innovative work on the superconductor-insulator transition, the votex glass phase in high-temperature superconductors, and macroscopic quantum phenomena"

Peter L. Gammel, 1989
AT&T Bell Laboratories
"for his seminal studies of superfluid ³He and of magnetic structure in both heavy fermion and high-temperature superconductors"

Veit Elser, 1988
AT&T Bell Laboratories and Cornell University
"for his seminal contributions to the field of quasicrystals and for his studies of quantum fluids and quantum spin systems"

A. Douglas Stone, 1987
Yale University
"for pioneering work on transport and localization phenomena in disordered and very small systems"

Thomas F. Rosenbaum, 1986
James Franck Institute, University of Chicago
"for the discovery of three-dimensional Wigner crystallization in HgCdTe at high magnetic fields"